


Dead Men's Shade

by icarus_chained



Category: James Asher Vampire Series - Barbara Hambly
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Noir, Detective Noir, Femme Fatale, Ficlet, Gen, POV First Person, Private Investigators, Prompt Fic, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-16
Updated: 2013-08-16
Packaged: 2017-12-23 17:54:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/929388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James Asher, private detective, walks into his office one day to find a very dangerous young man keeping company with his wife.</p>
<p>Tiny snippet of a noir AU for a prompt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dead Men's Shade

**Author's Note:**

> Because if we're casting James as the PI, _naturally_ that makes Simon the femme fatale, doesn't it?

There was a man sitting perched on Lydia's desk when I opened the door to the office. 

Maybe, had I been someone else, or Lydia been someone else, that wouldn't have sent the chills running down my spine, even before the odd stillness of the gentleman in question made itself known. But we weren't anyone else, and because of that I paused, for the smallest of seconds, before stepping the rest of the way through the door and closing it behind me.

Listen. Let's just say caution paid off in this line of work, yeah? Being a private eye wasn't usually the same kind of trouble working for the government had been, but it had its share of funny customers at the same time. This, well, this looked like it was going to be one of them.

The young man smiled at me, mild as milk and smooth as a still lake. His hand rested lightly on Lydia's arm, and when she turned to smile at me herself, the warning in her eyes was so faint a stranger wouldn't have seen it.

"Mr Asher," she said, light and impersonal, the image of a perfect secretary. Just a nice young woman working for the local private eye, that's all. "There's a gentleman here to see you?"

"So I see," I murmured, taking off my jacket with smooth, casual movements that ought to have disguised the pistol I was quietly palming. "Would the gentleman like to step through to my office, or would he prefer to keep chatting up my secretary?"

"Your pardon," the man said suddenly, serene and placid as he met my eyes, and hell if ice didn't skate right up my spine. "I only wished to pass the time until your arrival." He smiled, lifting Lydia's hand lightly to incline his head over it in the European fashion. It matched the odd inflection in his voice, the faint touch of Spain. "I am not so far removed from courtesy that I would make demands of another man's wife."

I froze. Lydia's eyes, bare without the shield of the glasses she kept taking off for company, darted once to mine in pure alarm. And the 'gentleman', damn his eyes, nodded gently to himself and grazed a light kiss across Lydia's knuckles before standing between us.

"I am not without resources, you see," he explained softly, his eyes lingering in amusement over the pistol now tucked beneath the jacket over my arm. "I wished to show you that. I understand that you do not wish your relationship to be commonly known. Wise, perhaps, in your line of work. And I assure you, none will discover it from me. But I wanted you to know my ... capabilities, Professor Asher, before we discussed our business."

He moved away from Lydia, so smoothly I barely saw him go, and despite knowing it would only confirm things further, I stepped into the gap he made and put her behind me, away from him. Lydia, in deference to necessity over vanity, slipped her spectacles on with one hand and the snub little derringer out of the desk drawer with the other. My wife, ladies and gents. Practical in _almost_ all things.

And then, while he stood and watched us knowingly, I paused for a second. Stared at him in my turn, sizing him up openly now the way I'd been doing surreptitiously since I'd walked through the door. Maybe it was defiance, maybe it was caution, maybe I just wanted two minutes to get a hold on things. But for those few minutes, I studied him blatantly, and didn't do a damn thing else. He let me. Damn him anyway.

Spanish, definitely, by the voice and the manners. Not so much by looks, with that hair so blond it was almost colourless, but then that didn't necessarily mean anything. Lucrezia Borgia had been blonde too. And it said a lot, didn't it, that that was who he put me in mind of. A slender young man, almost fragile-looking, but he was dangerous. The kind of dangerous that got a man killed, and maybe even the kind that did the killing. He knew too much about me. That Lydia was my wife. That I _had_ a wife. That 'professor' was more than just a nickname given to me because I played the harmless old fool so very well. 

Any one of those was bad news. All at once, and combined with that placid, lethal stillness, they tallied up to something that made me give serious thought to pulling my pistol and trying to see him forcibly out the door. Unfortunately, from the look of him, that might not be as easy as it should have been. And there was the small fact that those details tallied up to something else, as well. 

They tallied up to someone too dangerous for me to leave wandering around without knowing what he was up to.

"Seems to me," I said slowly, after those long two minutes, "that a man with your capabilities shouldn't need a private detective to take care of business for him."

He smiled, the expression appearing all at once on a face that had, I suddenly realised, been eerily immovable up to now. It was just about creepy as all hell, and the vicious gleam of amusement in those pale eyes did absolutely nothing to help with that. 

"Ordinarily," he said, in that soft-as-snakeskin voice of his, "you would be correct, Professor. Normally I would deal with such matters myself. But the circumstances in this instance are ... somewhat unusual." 

And then, out of the blue, he _moved_. Or something like moving, anyway. I didn't see it. I didn't even realise it was happening. One second, he was standing calm and polite beside the door, the next he was on top of me, one hand pinning mine to the desk, the other negligently holding my purloined pistol up for his examination. My breath hitched, alarm and no small amount of fury, and he looked up from inches away to smile at me, light and cheerful, before pulling that ... that vanishing trick again, fetching up back beside the door, as unruffled as if he'd never moved at all, and only my pistol in his hand to say a damn thing had happened.

For some reason, in the thrill of blind panic that caused, the soft click of Lydia arming her derringer behind me brought an odd surge of pride.

"My name," the creature said softly, after a fraught moment, "is Don Simon Xavier Christian Morado de la Cadena-Ysidro." He paused, watching us thoughtfully, and then ... then he said something that turned my day, and quite possibly my life, on its end.

"I am a vampire, Professor. And it seems I need your help."

... Well hell, I thought, shooting one startled glance at Lydia and catching the one she sent me in return. Alright. Give the man his due.

Whatever else you said about him, that sure wasn't the shade of funny I'd been expecting.


End file.
